19 August 2008

One Time Sale

What is One Time Sale?

In simple words: Sell it. Forget it.

Well, thats for the seller. Not for the consumers.

In a city like Bangalore, there are so many customers for any establishment, small or big, that some unhappy customers does not matter to them at all. So, they happily go about cheating the customers and stand by their behaviour.

I had been to a departmental store and bought an item which had a Rs.75/- discount. A week later while cleaning my drawer I found the bill and noticed that they had not given the discount. I went to the store again and they apologized and asked me to pickup anything for Rs.75/-. This is a very large store and they sell thousands of items every day, mostly consumables.

I had also been to an electronic showroom looking for a LCD or Plasma TV. There was a good discount on one of the LCD TV. I asked for more discount and the kind salesperson was very happy to give me and additional 5% discount! Thats when my instincts told me something was wrong. I postponed the idea and walked out.

I asked one of my friend who knows a lot about these and he told me that particular model of LCD TVs is not being manufactured at all! The salesman told me it was a brand new model and this was an inaugural offer.

What the departmental store sells is consumables. I visit this store once a week or maybe once in two weeks. But thats not the case with the electronic showroom. I will not go there again. I am not going to buy another TV for another few years at least. If that person cheats me, it'll be too late by the time I find out. Or worse, I may not find out at all.

How do I prevent such people from fooling others? I can tell about such people to my friends, my colleagues, my acquaintances on social networking sites, my colony people.

What percent of Bangalore did I cover? Negligible. I can ask all of them to forward the mail to their friends and so on. But once such info passes the circle-of-confidence, people will just ignore such mails. Or they might get cautious but still visit that particular store. If I do get cheated, I can file a case against them in Consumer Courts. But that is still not going to prevent them from cheating others.

Well, with this many number of consumers and the fact that they are not well connected, such salesmen and stores will continue to be in business forever....